Saddle Routing

Here are some pics of one of my favorite jobs... routing saddle slots. This is one of my favorite jobs because this is probably my favorite jig to use. I like to rout saddle slots on the guitar, with the bridge already located and glued. In most circumstances this enables us to actually intonate the proper location for the saddle... a unique privilege for an acoustic guitar. Electric guitars have movable saddles, which makes adjusting the intonation easy. Acoustic guitars have a fixed saddle placement.

So, this series shows two guitars having their saddle slots routed. The first one is a classical, which I was just widening the slot for the purpose of making it clean and true... the original slot was ugly... so I was just making it right. The second guitar is an old Harmony. I was showing Nate (my repair assistant) how to set up the jig and make the rout.

Setting up the jig.














Routing the slot.

Done. (But not a very good pic.)



















Nate's turn. Checking the alignment of the jig.














Routing and watching.














Done. Hard to see the slot in this pic. We routed this as a "through saddle slot," like what you see on older vintage guitars (or vintage-style guitars.)













-- Ryan Elewaut

The Worst Headstock Fracture... Ever

So, I'm going back through some pictures of past repairs and finding content for the new blog. Here are a couple pics from the worst headstock fracture I ever had the pleasure of repairing. This was a Gibson acoustic with a headstock break completely perpendicular to the neck and just behind the nut. There was virtually no surface area for a sound glue joint. The guitar had been broken at the head stock twice prior.

I applied wax to the exposed truss rod with a burning candle. I wanted the truss to still be functional... i.e. not be seized by the first glue job. The first glue step was to simply get the headstock back on the neck of the guitar. I knew this step would be structurally useless, I just needed to get the head back in place to begin the reinforcement.







Below you can see all the various glue joints showing the various reinforcements made during the repair. There are two mahogany splines inlayed parallel to the neck, on either side of the truss rod. Then a disc planer, mounted on a drill press, was used to thin the back of the headstock down to create another gluing surface... which created addition strength. Epoxy was used during all glue procedures for the additional strength provided by the adhesive.

Again, I don't have pictures of the completed project. The repair turned out clean, especially after refinishing the neck with dark stained lacquer. It was nice to be able to hide these (great looking) glue joints with the dark finish.




--R.E.